Hana Lord ’18 Wins Highly Selective Yenching Scholarship

Lord will conduct graduate research in China studies at Peking University in Beijing, China.

Hana Lord ’18 is the recipient of a Yenching Scholarship to pursue graduate studies at Peking University in Bejing, China. She was selected on the basis of her outstanding academic record, interest in interdisciplinary study of China, extracurricular achievement, community engagement, social responsibility, and leadership potential.

The Yenching Academy of Peking University provides a generous postgraduate scholarship for an interdisciplinary master’s degree in China studies for outstanding graduates from across the globe. This initiative brings young people who show promise to lead and innovate in their fields together in an intensive learning environment where they can explore China and its role in the world. The academy aims to shape a new generation of global citizens with a nuanced understanding of China.

“I am deeply grateful for this opportunity to study a country and a culture that I am unfamiliar with,” Lord says. “I am particularly excited to be able to live, work, and grow with an international cohort of students at Yenching Academy.”

Lord, who has an independent major in Critical East Asian Studies, plans to select an academic concentration in history and archaeology for the China studies graduate program at Peking University. She is eager to strengthen her understanding of Chinese history and culture and build upon her Mandarin language skills. Her academic study and research at Grinnell and a year abroad at Waseda University in Tokyo, Japan, focused on migration patterns in the Japanese colonial era. Her upcoming graduate studies will enable her to further explore the history of East Asia from the early- to mid-1900s.

Originally from Raleigh, North Carolina, Lord will begin her graduate studies in the fall after completing a Boone Scholars summer internship with the Boone East Asian Collection at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago. At Grinnell, she has been a student assistant in the Department of Special Collections and Archives and a student leader in the Chinese/Japanese Student Educational Policy Committee. She was a junior when she was inducted into the Phi Beta Kappa Society.